I used to laugh at some of my fellow conservatives who believed that the United States should withdraw its membership in the United Nations. The notion belonged in the Robert Taft era when visions of Bilderbergs and Trilateral Commission conspiracies haunted the dreams of the paranoid right. (They still do but not half as bad as it used to be.)

Sure, it’s full of anti-American brutes and thugs, but you can’t go anywhere in the world without tripping over people who hate us. You have to be daffy to like the US in a lot of places on this planet — something that was true even after our Lightwalking Messiah became president.

Corruption? There was a time that I believed simple bureaucratic inefficiency at the United Nations was the price we paid to participate in a forum where at least we had the veto in the Security Council. And even with all its drawbacks, there was a time I believed that the United Nations mattered as a place where the superpowers could talk about problems in a neutral forum that contributed to stability and peace.

Yes, I was young and stupid once. Perhaps the UN was never any of those things, that it was a mirage, a convenient fantasy that was designed to cover up the world body’s fatal flaws.

Whatever the UN was, it is no longer. I wrote this a few years ago when I wondered whether it was time to withdraw from the organization:

The United Nations is not a serious place. It is a place where people pretend. It is a place where people pretend to address the serious issues of the day when they have no desire to do so nor seriously engage any process that would begin to solve them. It is a place where people pretend that what they do or say matters one whit to the gimlet eyed thugs whose murderous designs on the rest of humanity are downplayed and even rationalized. And it is a place where people pretend that all of this is so despite knowing full well that it is not.

Adults do not pretend. Adults deal with the world as it is not as they would like it to be. In this, the UN then has become a playground, a fantasyland for childish notions of “peace” and “stability.” It has become the number one enabler of genocidal maniacs, brutish aggressors, and fanatics with an eye on Armageddon. And since the consequences of facing down the evil is too painful, they pretend the evil doesn’t exist.

Add to this a breathtaking cynicism that has now made the UN not only fatally flawed, but dangerous to human liberty as well. Is it my imagination or has the United Nations gotten infinitely worse over the last two decades? Maybe it’s that I’m paying attention more but it seems to me that there have been some massive examples of personal and institutional corruption publicized in the last few years relating to the UN which prove that this is an organization that does not deserve US taxpayer monies, nor is it any longer in the interest of the United States to belong.

Oil for Food - possibly the biggest bribery case in the history of human civilization with up to $20 billion in bribes and kickbacks, also ensnaring former SG Kofi Annan and his son; the UN “peacekeeper” scandals involving selling underage girls for sex - these are just the more egregious examples of the shocking corruption that passes as business as usual for the world body.

The day to day waste is incredible. Nobody knows how much the UN Secretariat spends because it doesn’t have a budget in the real sense of the word. It is estimated at around $5 billion a year - just for the secretariat. That doesn’t include all the funding for WHO, peacekeepers, and other UN functions.

And now, the clincher.

The Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - the UN office that is ramrodding the entire planet-wide effort to cut emissions, do the science, and transfer massive amounts of cash from rich countries to poor countries, has a conflict of interest so profoundly corrupting as to be beyond belief.

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri is involved in dozens of companies who benefit directly from his panel’s decisions on climate change:

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

Today, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or adviser to many of the bodies which play a leading role in what has become known as the international ‘climate industry’.

A guy who has the fate of the western world’s economies pretty much in his hands has a direct, personal, financial interest to portray climate change as gruesome, terrifying, and inevitable a reality as possible?

Should it surprise us that this is, indeed, how the IPCC views climate change when the man responsible for leading the world toward a responsible future is involved with “more than a score” (20) of companies who are set to become fabulously wealthy because of his say so?

A guy who doesn’t know his ass from a climate model is overseeing the biggest cooperative international effort in history. The only thing comparable that comes to mind was the nearly successful effort by the WHO to eradicate smallpox. But the world was much smaller back in the 1970’s and no one had to gin up fear about the effects of that disease.

Are we to believe our government is unaware of these connections? Of course not. You can bet they are also fully aware of the consequences now that these connections are out in the open.

Here’s just a couple of those pies in which Dr Pachauri has dipped his fingers:

The original power base from which Dr Pachauri has built up his worldwide network of influence over the past decade is the Delhi-based Tata Energy Research Institute, of which he became director in 1981 and director-general in 2001. Now renamed The Energy Research Institute, TERI was set up in 1974 by India’s largest privately-owned business empire, the Tata Group, with interests ranging from steel, cars and energy to chemicals, telecommunications and insurance (and now best-known in the UK as the owner of Jaguar, Land Rover, Tetley Tea and Corus, Britain’s largest steel company).

Although TERI has extended its sponsorship since the name change, the two concerns are still closely linked.

In India, Tata exercises enormous political power, shown not least in the way it has managed to displace hundreds of thousands of poor tribal villagers in the eastern states of Orissa and Jarkhand to make way for large-scale iron mining and steelmaking projects.

[...]

TERI-NA is funded by a galaxy of official and corporate sponsors, including four branches of the UN bureaucracy; four US government agencies; oil giants such as Amoco; two of the leading US defence contractors; Monsanto, the world’s largest GM producer; the WWF (the environmentalist campaigning group which derives much of its own funding from the EU) and two world leaders in the international ‘carbon market’, between them managing more than $1 trillion (£620 billion) worth of assets.

All of this is doubtless useful to the interests of Tata back in India, which is heavily involved not just in bio-energy, renewables and insurance but also in ‘carbon trading’, the worldwide market in buying and selling the right to emit CO2. Much of this is administered at a profit by the UN under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) set up under the Kyoto Protocol, which the Copenhagen treaty was designed to replace with an even more lucrative successor.

Under the CDM, firms and consumers in the developed world pay for the right to exceed their ‘carbon limits’ by buying certificates from those firms in countries such as India and China which rack up ‘carbon credits’ for every renewable energy source they develop – or by showing that they have in some way reduced their own ‘carbon emissions’.

How can anyone take anything the IPCC says about climate change seriously? What kind of cynical, corrupt, power hungry organization would place this man in charge in the first place?

Look, I am not a warming denier. But Holy Mother of God people - we’re about to spend trillions of our own money and many trillions more from other industrialized countries based on this crook’s say so. And don’t bother to tell me that the IPCC isn’t affected by what Pachauri wants. It is he who shaped the IPCC statements in 2003 and 2007 that sounded such a shrill alarm about global warming. Would the warnings have been so dire without him as chairman? Don’t you think we should find that out before committing economic sepaku?

If Climategate didn’t convince reasonable people to take a second look at the science upon which global warming is based, perhaps these revelations will force even some believers to be a little more skeptical.

And this should also be the last straw as far as our participation in the United Nations. Sure, keep giving money to WHO, to the refugee commission, maybe even to the peacekeeping operations.

But our contributions to keep the United Nations secretariat functioning should be stopped and we should clear out our offices and let the kleptocrats have it. When having sex, I like to know who’s screwing me - something you can’t say about the UN.

Every nation would be “friended.” They could all therefore have their say on any issue they chose: hating Israel being of course the number one issue, followed closely by hating the United States, with third place going to squeezing cash donations from the developed nations. Two hates and a gimme.

Then we take that lovely waterfront property in New York and sell it to developers. We spend the proceeds on treating AIDS in Africa, on disaster relief in South Asia, and so on. Net plus all around.

2

still liberal Said:
5:47 pm

Rick, I know you are not religious, but Amen, brother. Ineffective and corrupt are the best one can say for the U.N. I also agree with Michael Reynolds. Trump International Towers at 1st Ave & E 44th St in NYC chould be very hot property!

3

dexter45 Said:
8:43 pm

When you were describing the UN I really thought you were talking about Washington. I see little difference between the two.
Another point, I do not trust any rich snake oil salesman, and that means I see little difference between those who make billions off climate change while people go hungry and those who make billions off oil while people go hungry.
All the cap and trade money will go to the rich while the poor suffer. I am afraid it will resemble the health care bill and will be nothing more than another transfer of money from the poor and middle class to the uber rich.

4

SShiell Said:
9:30 pm

I’ve got only two words for this article:

AMEN, BROTHER!

5

U.Lessou Said:
10:37 pm

If there was any doubt that Moran has ventured into the loony world of deniers, this piece has just broke the camel’s back. Seemingly discussing the UN, it gradually builds up to be yet another “I LOVE JIM INHOFE!” screed. Yes, indeed, “I’m not a… denier” but why should we spend capital to reorganize and reinvest in a new set of infrastructures to combat a dilemma which I wholeheartedly accept or else I would have labeled myself as a denier but I just contended such assertion!!!

Moran censures the UN for its conflict of interest of investment in “related technologies” but, with malice and forethought or sheer zealotry, uses this sophomoric reasoning as a club to beat up the science. This should leave no doubt that he dastardly veneers the denier-amorous, deeply concealed within, with the correlation does not prove causation fallacy. He doesn’t deny the science on its merit but he invites us to be awry of “Climategate” because that somehow undermines the “science.”

Moran, you’ve gone from a fence sitter to crowd surfing on the ocean of conspiracy theorists. Congratulations! Of course, if Moran wishes to adequately correct himself, I might be an assistant: “I accept the science for its finding but vigilant of certain elements for their environmentalist kookary. I know the fact the science has determined the climate change is real — it’s just that I don’t accept certain solutions offered to address the issue.”

Ranting about Climategate when you do not have an ensemble of scientific credibility to discern the correspondence in the context which was provided and firing a panoply of “anecdotal” spiel of piffle regarding the issue day after day, pretty much brands you another denier neophyte who is cozying to the worst of the worst. The pattern is clear for anyone with more than two brain cells to see.

6

Tyranno Said:
11:21 pm

Since I too, do not possess “an ensemble of scientific credibility” please accept my observations in the spirit they are given.

“I know the fact that science has determined the climate change is real.”

HHhhhmmmm. . . of course climate change is real. Distinct climate changes of a degree or two are recordable every hour if not every minute. Thus their revised statement/accusations, from global warming to climate change, are not incorrect. But, one just has to buy into such a bizarre, constructed, unprovable, narrative about the world to believe what they believe. If non-believers are the equivalent of (holocaust) “deniers” then believers are the equivalent of extremist eco-terrorists who, like their other religious brethren, also believe they will get your 27 eco-virgins payoff in the next life for their righteous but often criminal acts now.

All I demand is that those who do not believe are given the same hearing as all of the Elmer “algore” Gantry’s out there who are pushing and profiting from this sophistry. Oh and, are algore and Dr. Rajendra Pachauri not the jesse jackson and al sharpton of environmentalism?

7

obamathered Said:
11:30 pm

The deranged freak show in Copenhagen was the last straw, indeed. I almost vomited to see a United States president disgrace himself and the nation by his presence there..but then again, the abomination of the United Nations defiles our soil every day. Close the UN and spend the money on actual assistance to people the world over.

8

Jim Said:
3:01 am

Dear U. Lessou:

Five Suggestions:

1) Learn to Read.
2) Pay special attention to reading comprehension.
3) Learn to write above a 7th Grade level.
4) Practice responding to points made in the piece you are writing about,not imaginary straw people.
5) Be Polite. Believe it or not, if you address Rick politely others will take your arguments more seriously, even when they are poorly thought out and even more poorly expressed.

Have A Better Day!

PS: People come to this site because Rick thinks and writes clearly. It is perfectly fine to disagree, as I sometimes do. But I for one, want to read polite, intelligent disagreement that shows the other side of the argument, not simple screed.

9

Joe Said:
8:04 am

I too would close down the inept United Nations.But on a list of priorities for this country I don’t think it would rate the top ten.I’ve stopped believing in global warming,but,would do everything in our power to get off foreign oil, including drilling in Anwar,fast track nuclear,wind,solar, and most importantly weatherizing our homes…duh

10

B.Poster Said:
9:29 am

Drilling for more of our own oil and building more refineries is a good place to start. It can be started relatively quickly, as we already know how to do it and we already know where the oil is. In other words, no costly research and development.

And yes, close down the United Nations in the United Nations. The UN really only does two things well. 1.)Undermine America’s just interests. 2.)Undermine Israel’s just interests. I think the argument for keeping the United States in it over the years probably goes something like this: while the UN is hostile to America, it would continue to exist even without American support and it would continue to be hostile to America. By having it in the United States and by the United States being a member of it we are at least able to have some input. If we were not a member, we would have no input. While I understand and can empathize with such an argument, I think any benefits of the Untied States being involved in this are outweighed by the negatives.

11

lionheart Said:
1:48 pm

we should clear out our offices and let the kleptocrats have it.

Better yet, let them build their own goddamn building- preferrably in Seoul, right on the DMZ. Convert the existing UN building to high priced NY apartments. The yearly income alone would make a big dent in the national debt. Of course, Charlie Wrangle gets a couple of floors for free.

There are elements of the UN that are involved in feeding starving Africans and other necessary charitable operations around the globe (UNESCO,WHO,IMF,UNICEF, etc). The worth of all such operations of the UN should be determined, and an alternative to each of them that are indeed worthy of surviving arranged, before shutting the UN down permanently.

It is my contention that the majority of nations in the world and their governments are not morally and ethically ready for democracy, and hence can only corrupt any organization such as the UN. Quite obviously, they have.

It has also been my contention that a coalition of the strong, free and democratic nations of the West would be far preferable to the UN, would give us a forum to replace the UN, and ensure that issues and voting would be along moral lines that free societies can have the will to support.